Canadian Airborne Hyperspectral Imager Development

摘要

The Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has embarked on a Technical Demonstration Program (TDP) to develop an airborne Hyperspectral Imaging System (HSI). This instrument is mounted in a Convair 580 turbo propeller driven aircraft and covers the 1.6 to 12 micron region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The spatial sampling of this system is determined by an 8x8 element detector array. Two arrays are operated simultaneously to cover the entire spectral region (InSb technology to cover 1.6 to 5.3 um region and HgCdTe technology to cover 2.5 to 12 um region). The spectral sampling is generated using a Fourier Transform spectrometer with a spectral resolution ranging from 1 to 16 cm- 1. The frame rate of the system is variable (minimum of 16 Hz at 4 cm-1 spectral resolution). The instantaneous field-of-view (IFOV) of the instrument can be changed from 1.1 to 3.3 mrad, by interchanging collection telescopes (9x or 3x). The total field-of-view (TFOV) of this HSI is therefore small (8xIFOV) but may be pointed over a field-of-regard (FOR) 8 time that of the TFOV. In addition, Wide-FOV broadband cameras, operating in the visible, mid-wave and long-wave infrared bands, are used to register the entire FOR. An GPS/INS system is used to guide the pointing of the imaging spectrometer module. This instrument is essentially nadir looking and is based on the Ground-to-Air spectral imaging system (PIRATE) developed at DRDC Valcartier. The PIRATE system has been used to measure the 2-5 micron region with similar spatial and spectral resolutions as the airborne system. This project has completed the three-year system design and construction phase and is in the process of field testing (up to four distinct scenarios) to evaluate its performance and begin assessing the Military Utility of Airborne Hyperspectral Imagery . This paper will describe the instrumentation and present selected preliminary results.